“Ew. It is going to take forever to wash this slime off me…”
Litvir blinked, then paused, then fell silent. He wondered why that was the first thing he thought. Litvir’s surroundings were currently quite dire to say the least. Currently, the Psionic Decay Lord was trapped in an awful fog, wrapped up in a horrible, slimy cocoon, the only articulating he had being his neck and the tip of his tail. A wet tentacle was wrapped around Litvir’s mouth, stopping him from talking properly, but he had enough control to be able to mutter the odd cantrip. Something Litvir immediately did, to see whether he was alone or not.
As far as Litvir could tell, at least in a 50m radius, he was definitely on his own. Not that he could see much past about 10m ahead of him, but he was technically safe for now.
All around Litvir though were… more cocoons. Empty ones. Whatever had been inside had been sucked dry, the ones nearby had bits of… something in them. The remains of a body, perhaps. Worryingly, most of the cocoons were larger than the one Litvir was trapped in. In fact, despite the fact that Litvir stood at 2.8m tall (he swore he’d grown 10cm in the last few evs), his cocoon seemed to be the smallest. Worse, the cocoons didn’t look uniform, as they would for an incubating animal. They were all different sizes, messily put together, empty and unwanted. A quick count suggested there were about 50 of them. Both not as many as Litvir expected, but also more than he would have liked. Wherever he was, it was clearly some sort of feeding area, and he was the next meal.
A wave of uncertainty was beginning to lap at Litvir’s mind, so he decided to actually do something useful and try to escape. Although Litvir couldn’t move his arms, he was capable of summoning a single psionic blade, which he used to start cutting through the slime and mucus. Litvir was thankful he wasn’t hanging and seemed to have been dumped unceremoniously on the ground. Eventually, Litvir managed to cut most of himself free and drag himself out of the cocoon, but Litvir swiftly realized he had two new problems now.
The first was that Litvir had no idea where he was. Absolutely none. For all he knew, Litvir could have been trillions of miles away from home. Sure, Litvir could have potentially shadowjumped back home, but he was certain he could only travel about 100m at a time doing so, and Litvir NEEDED to know a rough distance before he attempted to shadowjump anywhere, otherwise he could end up… somewhere. Not where he wanted to be. It was mostly why, as a mortal, Litvir rarely left his secret labs. They were kept perfectly dark and he knew them perfectly, allowing him to essentially teleport anywhere.
Didn’t really matter though. This strange place didn’t really have any useful shadows. The constant, grey-lit fog meant nothing was really dark enough for Litvir to jump through.
The other problem was that Litvir currently couldn’t use his legs. Mostly his left leg, where he’d been scratched, and a small amount of green ooze wept from the wound. There was a paralytic venom running amok in Litvir’s body, slowly depriving him of his mobility. As long as Litvir kept himself calm though and lowered his heartbeat, he could keep the venom from spreading. Using his telekinesis to move was the obvious answer to the lack of leg movement, but a thought quickly occurred to him.
Muttering a new cantrip, a gush of air emanated from Litvir’s hand. He was sending out telepathic and telekinetic feelers, essentially bait, to see if anything was around or watching. A telekinetic feeler about 30m away triggered some sort of snare mechanism that let out a loud screech.
Immediately, Litvir felt movement. He remained on the ground, keeping himself as low as possible. Whatever owned this… place, it had set up tracks to capture anyone who tried to use telekinesis. This was bad. This meant that Litvir was going to have to crawl out of here. Assuming he didn’t eventually lose mobility in the rest of his body as well.
Suddenly, a much bigger problem turned up. A hideous yet familiar voice roared through the air.
“I KNOW YOU ARE TRYING TO FLEE, SOULDRAINER LITVIR KALDYNIK! I RECOMMEND NOT TRYING TO DO SO.”
Litvir sighed. He was in deep, deep trouble. And, of course, he was going to try and flee. Luckily, although the ground was rough, there were lumps and bumps that Litvir could use to drag himself more quickly and quietly. Although Litvir could hear the Mindeater slithering around, it seemed to be checking the traps near the snare Litvir had set off. This allowed him to at least move out away from his former prison and hide around a corner. Just in time as well, since the Mindeater had made their way over and was now sniffing around.
Both Myalotroph and Litvir knew that Litvir was telepathically covering his presence, but there was little Litvir could to to cover his scent.
“You did not get very far!” the Mindeater laughed cruelly as it edged closer to Litvir. “The venom in your veins will get you eventually.”
Litvir peered around the corner and started weighing up his options. Running was blatantly out of the question. Hiding would be pointless since there were clearly traps around here set to ensnare anyone who used psionic powers near them, but perhaps it could buy him precious time? Litvir was on a time limit, thanks to the spreading venom. Eventually, he’d be unable to move entirely. His only other option would be to fight the monster directly. Either way, all Litvir could do was delay until someone came to rescue him.
Rather abruptly, Myalotroph took away Litvir’s ability to choose by attacking him with a blast of telekinesis that utterly destroyed Litvir’s cover. Litvir decided to respond to this by summoning a small, psionic blade and throwing it at the Mindeater. He didn’t intentionally mean to hit it in the face, he had planned to cause a distraction, but the noise that Myalotroph made suggested that Litvir maybe had a chance to fight back.
Using his telekinesis, Litvir raised himself into the air, then lobbed some more psionic blades in the Mindeater’s direction. Several grazed the horrible serpent, and it roared in anger and pain, retaliating by using its own telekinesis to gather pools of slime and surround them around Litvir in a bid to trap him once more.
“I do not even know what your problem with me is!” Litvir dodged the slime, but at the same time, he had to stop his legs flopping about too much as he moved. “Perhaps we should find out?”
Litvir didn’t really want to do this, but it was time for him to use his… nastier psionic abilities. The manifestations he had sealed way when he became a Decayling, for fear of hurting others and outing himself. After all, it was life or death right now, and Litvir could feel the Mindeater’s paralytic venom working its way up his body.
Dark, shadowy tendrils exploded around Litvir’s person. Several twisted around Litvir’s legs, giving him some support, but Litvir twirled his hands around and thrust a majority of the tendrils towards Myalotroph, stabbing into its arms and digging deep into its head.
The Mindeater began to to get concerned, suddenly finding itself becoming the prey. It turned out, Myalotroph’s psionic powers weren’t that complicated, it just brute-forced its way through everything. Litvir had hoped that Myalotroph would begin to panic as he started peeling away their telepathic defences. He wanted to feed on those negative emotions, in the hopes that maybe Litvir could out-heal the venom, but the Mindeater wasn’t giving him the chance.
“Oh… Bloody Light… You… you just… feed on other Psions? Ones that… are considered problematic…”
“I was sent to consume you, yes. I give them protection from troublesome Psions like you. They let me feed and build my power in relative safety. You though… you are so… foreign…”
Litvir sneered. He used a stray shadow tendril to slap Myalotroph across the face in annoyance. However, Myalotroph just smiled.
“Time is up, Souldrainer Litvir Kaldynik.”
The venom had climbed up Litvir’s spine and was now interfering with his hand movements, making Litvir no longer able to control his shadow tendrils. The tendrils slowly melted away and the tables were turned once more as Myalotroph wrapped its serpentine body around Litvir. Litvir did try to struggle at first, muttering cantrips to summon psionic blades that cut at Myalotroph’s skin, but he was swiftly getting weaker.
However, Litvir stopped moving completely as the Mindeater plunged its fangs into Litvir’s neck and began to feed.
“Good boy. Stop struggling now. You can sleep. Thanks to you, I will feast heartily, and I will not have to feed again for aeons.”
As a powerful neurotoxin flooded his body, paralysing him completely, Litvir found it painfully ironic that he was about to die the same way he had killed others, back when he was mortal. Except with less emotional feeding and more actual feeding.
All of a sudden, the Mindeater’s grip abruptly disappeared, and a horrible, bright flash briefly illuminated the chamber. Litvir hit the ground with a thud, but so did Myalotroph. The Mindeater fell completely silent and twitched awkwardly. With the last of Litvir’s strength, he tried to do… something. But blood was pouring from Litvir’s neck, and he was completely paralysed, unable to even move his eyes. That being said, he could sense that the Mindeater was dead, and there was someone else nearby. They weren’t physically present, but Litvir felt telekinetic pressure on his wounds.
“Whoever you are, you summoned me just in time. Your friends are on their way. They’ll take you to safety. You won’t die today.”
The bleeding stopped. Litvir was still unable to move, but he was still alive. The presence seemed satisfied with this, then disappeared, vanishing in a puff of black sparkles.